


make me smile (come up and see me)

by datasymphony



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: College AU, M/M, its a big gay christmas, josh is blue boy, joshler - Freeform, pete and patrick are really gay, tyler is santa claus jr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 13:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6756523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/datasymphony/pseuds/datasymphony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>tyler's all alone for christmas, and SOMEONE keeps stealing his candy canes. luckily for him, he's got a genius plan to catch the thief. unluckily, said thief is really cute. <br/>REALLY cute, tyler thinks dazedly, even as smurf boy pulls his lips from tyler's, smirks cheekily, and backs out of the dorm, taking tyler's fresh bag of candy canes with him, and god dammit, he was just swindled out of 3.99 worth of christmas decor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	make me smile (come up and see me)

**Author's Note:**

> (title from the wedding present song of the same name) hey hey pals this is a fuckin draft from christmas 2014 but i kinda like it

Tyler takes Christmas pretty seriously.

He wears ugly Christmas sweaters. Hell, he _knits_ ugly Christmas sweaters. (Or, at least, he tries to. Nobody ever taught him to knit and his fellow college juniors don’t appreciate them anyway - but it’s the thought that counts, he insists to anyone that listens.) He writes Christmas cards to all of his friends and tries to buy them gifts using what little money he has, buys exclusively festive-themed coffee from the nearby Starbucks and by the second week of December his side of his shared dorm room looks like Santa threw up on it, much to his roommate Patrick’s disdain.

His family even leave him in charge of the Christmas decor in their house, something Tyler takes great pride in, and by Christmas eve the Joseph’s house is nearly always the most glowing in all of Ohio. He decorates the tree like it’s an art, and if you ask Tyler, it _is_ an art - the tinsel has to align with the baubles and fairy lights _just so_ , or it just isn’t right, and the star up top absolutely must be at the perfect angle from the ground. His phone is filled with festive tunes - anything from NSYNC’s Christmas album to Mariah Carey to Frank Sinatra which he doesn’t hesitate to blast full-volume on the way to classes or to the store, headphones abandoned in favour of ‘spreading the festive spirit’ (Patrick calls it antagonising the public with shitty commercialised pop music they don’t want to listen to, but Tyler disagrees and calls him an indie music hoe. The best thing is, Patrick can’t even argue).

So yeah, you could say Tyler takes Christmas seriously.

 

‘I’m sorry, honey, it’s just…something’s come up with your grandma’s health, and we think it’s best if you just stay on campus this year.’

‘ _What!?_ ’

‘Yeah, it’ll be fun! I’m sure your college has Christmas celebrations, and if not, I’m sure you can make your own. Ha ha…’ at least his mother has the grace to sound a little sheepish - because Tyler is outraged beyond words. Christmas is _his_ holiday - it’s _Tyler’s_ shitty Christmas sweaters that his family wear when they exchange presents from under the real, familiar-smelling tree that _Tyler_ decorated. It’s _Tyler’s_ expertly-wrapped gifts being handed with pride to his family, it’s _Tyler’s_ Christmas playlist bouncing throughout their house. It’s _Tyler’s_ holiday.

‘But-but all my friends are going home for Christmas,’ Tyler complains, sounding just a little childish. Okay, maybe a _lot_ childish, but c’mon. Christmas.

‘Have you even asked them?’ her tone has a teasing lilt to it, now, and Tyler kind of wants to stamp his feet and then cry a little because she’s not taking this _seriously_ , dammit. But…he hadn’t asked his friends, actually. He _never_ asked his friends, he was too busy crowing about how great the twice-the-price themed drinks were at Starbucks, and how great his Christmas was gonna be. A rush of guilt washes over him and he takes a moment to remind himself that his mother can’t _see_ him over the phone.

‘Maybe…ok, no, I haven’t,’ Tyler sulks to her, painfully aware of how petulant he sounds, and his mother’s tinny laugh sounds through the phone.

‘Well, you never know. Maybe you’ll meet a cute college boy under the mistletoe.’ Tyler blushes bright crimson and stammers over how _no, he will most certainly_ not _meet a boy under the mistletoe, oh my god mom you’re_ so _embarrassing_ , and she laughs again in the sly, motherly way that means she knows he’s blushing and also knows that she’s won him over.

Tyler hangs up a few minutes later, and dammit, this boy he’s going to meet under the mistletoe better be the _cutest_ darn thing he’s ever laid eyes on.

 

He tries to interrogate his roommate - and Pete Wentz, too, because he’s practically permanently residing in their room now, clinging on to Patrick like he’s some sort of life raft in Pete’s stormy emo sea - as soon as they come tumbling through the door to the dorm, laughing at each other’s cold-frosted red noses and traces of snow still dusting Patrick’s (Pete’s? Tyler’s pretty sure that beanie was Pete’s, once) beanie and nestled throughout Pete’s flat-ironed hair. Tyler feels a spark of ugly envy run through his veins when he’s totally ignored by the two in favour of the shorter(but only just) collapsing onto his bed with a sigh, eyes still locked with Pete’s eyeliner-caked ones. They were like, soulmates, or something, they _had_ to be - and according to Pete they were, although Patrick would just roll his eyes affectionately and shove him away lightly whenever he announced that. 

Tyler knows this, of course, because he’s Patrick’s official _roommate_ , and by extension Pete’s less-than-official roommate - meaning he’s suffered as a reluctant spectator of all their insignificant arguments and needlessly dramatic apologies and makeups (most of the drama came from Pete’s end, but what could he do) followed by passionate make outs which would quickly turn into something which had Tyler yelling ‘oh my _god_ , i’m still in the room, you assholes, just because I have my headphones on doesn’t mean I can’t _hear_ you, I’m going out to get coffee, when I come back this better be _over_ or so help me god’ and marching quickly out, abandoning whatever studying/procrastinating/working he’d been doing in favour of keeping himself mostly sane. He’d seen all of their sickeningly adorable moments, heard around a thousand of Pete’s stupid pickup lines even though they were already dating, and could practically read their reactions to each other like a book now because it had been _that long_. But, whatever, right? He’s not _jealous_. He clears his throat harshly to get their attention - once, twice because they’re _so_ fucking engrossed in each other they either don’t notice or don’t care the first time, and asks their Christmas plans.

As it turns out, both Pete and Patrick aren’t going home for Christmas - Pete’s having some kind of issues with his parents which he refuses to go into depth about with Tyler, and Patrick complains in almost painfully obvious faux-anger to all hell but steals glances filled with all the world’s adoration to the equally-short emo college kid that is Pete Wentz and makes up the most half-assed, conspicuous story about the family Stumps ‘being on holiday in the Bahamas’. Pete catches his bluff and says the story he’d relayed to Pete originally was that they were on holiday in _Europe_ , to which Patrick fidgets and laughs it off in a truly spectacular display of acting as ‘ah, um, it was a-a slip of the, th-the tongue.’ _Slip of the tongue, my ass,_ Tyler thinks sourly as he watches Pete practically curl up like a cat on Patrick’s lap and wrap his arms around the strawberry blonde where they’re sitting on Patrick’s bed, going back to ignoring the mousy and ticked off boy on the opposite side of the room and murmuring something intelligible in Patrick’s ear, which causes him to laugh and then that laugh to be abruptly cut off with a startled _mmmfh!_ because Pete’s slid his tongue into the boy’s mouth and okay, they’re making out, and _okay_ , that’s a hand on a thigh, time to mope around about how terribly dismal both his Christmas _and_ his nonexistent love life were looking elsewhere.

He mentally crosses them off the list of ‘People To Spend My Lame Campus Christmas With’, purely because he doesn’t think that he could handle this much sick puppy love while he remains so painfully single. Okay, maybe Tyler’s jealous. _Maybe_ \- but so what? He’s allowed to be jealous. He stands up quickly and shoves his phone in his pocket, grumbles something about needing coffee and a half-hearted warning to not get too ‘comfortable’, he’ll be back in twenty minutes or so, remember, _stay off his bed,_ and shrugs on his jacket as he heads off to get a (Christmas-themed)coffee.

 

A trip to Starbucks later and Tyler’s returning to a mercifully empty dorm room - Pete and Patrick have fucked off to who-knows-where - with a chill biting his feet and a half empty cup of still-warm peppermint mocha in hand. His favourite barista, Dallon Weekes; a fellow college student in his senior year, was working the cashier when he’d arrived and had been blessedly sympathetic to Tyler’s mournful recounting of how his family had _practically kicked him out of Christmas_ while Brendon Urie - freshman - had made his drink, bouncing around _extra_ excitedly in a way which at any other time, Tyler would’ve found endearing, but now sent his festive gloom to whole new levels of low. Dallon, always the hero, had reassured Tyler that he could always come over to his with Brendon for a bit on Christmas day. Tyler had thanked him but crossed them off his mental list too - he’d seen the blossoming romance between the two baristas every time their shifts had coincided with Tyler’s ‘enjoy an expensive caffeinated festive drink slash avoid Patrick and Pete’s most intimate moments’, more and more every day, and as much as he was looking for someone to spend Christmas day with (after his family had _oh so rudely_ abandoned _him_ ), he didn’t really want to encroach on what was most likely their first date.

He sighs as he juggles the drink and his phone in one hand, locking the door with a flourish - he could care less as to whether Patrick had a key or not right now. He needs his time to mope around in solitude - he knows exactly what he’s in for this Christmas break, and it’s not going to be fun. He’s going to see all the mistletoe strung up everywhere, he’s going to see winter flushed pairs blush with something more than the cold as they press shy first kisses against cold lips, and he’s going to see families all together walking down the streets bundled in scarves and hats and boots singing carols and hear little kids explain how _exactly_ they’re going to catch Santa in the act this year, and the worst part is he’s going to experience all of this _completely by himself._

Tyler sets the drink down on his dresser and all but throws himself onto his bed, shedding his coat as he does and leaving it in a crumpled heap on the floor, then kicks off his boots and burrows himself dolefully into his blanket. He’s acting like a god damn grinch and he knows it, but come _on_. Would it kill for just a little Christmas miracle? He reaches over and grabs the drink from where he’d just left it, curses angrily as he proceeds to spill it all over his newest ugly sweater (it has a cheerily smiling reindeer face on it which is now horribly defaced by a brown dripping mark which’ll probably stain) and promptly sets it back down, opting to put his head in his hands instead. Nope. No Christmas miracles for him.

 

The next day, Tyler sets up a communal Christmas tree in the dorm hallway. It’s smaller than a real tree and it’s painstakingly evident that it’s made of plastic, but hell, at least it’s _something_ , and it’s got tinsel and rainbow fairy lights and little cheap plastic baubles and it’s only when he’s finished hanging candy canes carefully off the fake branches when he realises he _forgot the star_.

Tyler sighs long-sufferingly - the star is the most important part of the tree, he can’t believe he forgot it and he feels like he’s somehow being traitorous to his own favourite holiday just _looking_ at the lack of crowning decor on the tree. He shoves the spare baubles back into the plastic box they came in and leaves it under the tree, hugging his jacket closer to his body as he heads back to the store to retrieve the missing ornament.

He’s halfway to the store when the docile tones of _Nothing for Christmas_ by New Found Glory playing (in his headphones, this time. He isn’t feeling festive enough himself to ‘spread the cheer’ via music out loud) is interrupted by the cheerful ringing of his mobile. He reads the caller ID - _Tricky Stump_ \- and picks up, scowling like the grinch he’s trying his hardest not to be, only to hear Pete’s voice rather than Patrick’s like he was expecting.

‘Hey hey, Ty-guy,’ Pete’s voice is measured and it sounds like he’s trying to contain his giggles. Tyler narrows his eyes as he crosses a road.

‘Is this a prank call? You forgot to turn off caller ID, if it is.’ Pete laughs out loud now - that loud, obnoxious, braying laugh that Patrick’s fond of for some god damn reason. Tyler rolls his eyes and suppresses a sigh - he’s really, _really busy_ being a Christmas grinch and kind of wants to spit ‘bah, humbug’ down the line and hang up, then go to the stupid store and get the stupid star and get a stupid toffee nut latte and go back to his stupid dorm and maybe cry his eyes out like his inner pouty child so desperately wants.

‘Not quite - although, maybe? Patrick noticed. Someone’s stealing shit from your dumb Christmas tree, dude. Or defacing it or something. I don’t really care, but, like, Patrick said you’d be pissed if i didn’t tell you, so. Come and catch the vagabond.’ 

Tyler hangs up and turns on his heel in two seconds flat, stuffing his phone into his pocket as he breaks into a brisk jog and _Nothing for Christmas_ returns full volume, because grinches and humbugs be damned, _nobody_ fucks with Tyler’s tree.

 

**Author's Note:**

> ;-000 there's half of the next chapter written should i continue


End file.
